Wiring experimentation

Yet again, just some incremental work. I wanted to figure out how to address the two seat heat feeds to the fuse box so I could get moving on that. First up was the question of whether I could actually just put two 14AWG wires into a single terminal. I tried that with a couple short pieces, and I did get them to crimp sort of OK into a larger terminal, but only by using the wrong (one size smaller) die in the crimper. I didn’t feel too crazy about that idea, even if it did feel secure.

OK, well what about doing a good old-fashioned window splice? Here again, my test for this worked ok, but I wasn’t to happy with it. Wrapping one wire around another is a good bit harder to do cleanly when they’re this big, and wetting them out with solder is a bit more work, too.

So instead, I’m going to terminate the two wires individually, and use a piggyback blade terminal on one. The piggyback terminal has both the female portion that’ll go on the fuse block, plus a male blade that another terminal can attach to.

Of course, I don’t have these, but hey, this was a good time to finally get those Molex connectors I need ordered. Digi-key now says they won’t have the part I need in stock until…November…so I just ordered from Mouser instead. Looks like that stuff should be here by the end off the week.

Maybe I should work on some of my antenna coax runs in the meantime. Or I guess I could get my ground bus located and mounted, so I can start terminating all those wires. I’ll need all that done before I can power everything up anyway.

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